Comments on: Back to School ICT

By: Pewari

Pewari — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:18:33 +0000

Miss L: that’s a good idea, I will do.

GoodTwin: WordPerfect was great in comparison, wasn’t it. However, like many I’m sure, I do prefer a WYSIWIG interface, as long as it doesn’t behave idiosyncratically. There are word processors out there which manage it…

Lyle: Yes, heard lots of good things about OpenOffice and it does come for Mac. At the moment, though, I don’t need to use MS formats so am happy enough with iWork and now Swift Publisher for DTP stuff. But if I have issues in the future, I’ll be downloading OpenOffice.

Colin: the swearing is the really crucial bit, which makes it so much more tricky in front of children ;)

By: Colin Brooks

Colin Brooks — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:31:46 +0000

Lyle :: OpenOffice is cross-platform and so it works on Macs as well. It’s pretty much the same as MS Office though when it comes to DTP. Neither of those are designed to do something like that but if you put enough time and effort (and swearing) into it you’ll eventually get something out.

By: Lyle

Lyle — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:25:01 +0000

It’s not strictly relevant (and I don’t know if there’s a Mac version) but I’ve found I now use OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) as an MS Office replacement, and it suits me fine.

Also, there’s one hell of a lot less Voodoo required to get things to work – and you can still set it to save docs as MS Office filetypes(although not the ’08 version as yet, which is fine because Office’08 is f’kin ‘orrible IMHO) and open MS Office docs straight into OpenOffice.

By: GoodTwin

GoodTwin — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:51:24 +0000

Word’s handling of long documents has long frustrated me with the daft section breaks and trying to keep numbering straight. Even worse if you want chapter numbers with page references.
I used Wordperfect (for DOS to start with) and they had a superb interface for that sort of thing – it was simple codes, much like html is today. You want that as a title? You put [title][/title] around it, etc.
Such a shame that M$ dominates the world.

By: Miss L

Miss L — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:14:01 +0000

Have a look at the curriculum online, then it will give you a good idea of what he will be doing. Lots of fun activities in the maths section!!

By: Pewari

Pewari — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:13:30 +0000

anabels: ugh yes, I remember having to do reports and dissertation on earlier incarnation on Word it was not fun.

I also remember the first time I had to write some training documentation on the Mac. I used Pages (the Mac equivalent of Word) and had to have a title page, table of contents, main body with loads of screenshots and a glossary. I was prepared to do battle…

… it was so *easy* I was in shock. So how come Word couldn’t be designed to be as intuitive?!

By: anabels

anabels — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 09:24:37 +0000

Getting Word to do things it is nominally designed to do is an exercise in fustration a lot of the time. Try getting page numbering to be in Roman numerals for some parts and in arabic numerals for another and starting at a aprticular page number at a particular point in the document. Never mind having to control double spacing for main body but single space indented for quotations. So I am beyond not surprised that it isn’t very good at handling images which is why i cheated for as long as I could with teh thesis and had the images as separate documents that i printed and put in the right places in the bound copies. Unfortunately the final version had to be a single electronic file. Converting it to PDF was the most painless part of the process. I am impressed that Akra jnr hasn’t punched the computer or his ICT teacher!

By: Colin Brooks

Colin Brooks — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:08:14 +0000

That’s the best way to spend money though!

By: Pewari

Pewari — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:02:58 +0000

I remember that time of life well :)

I’d like to say that it gets easier, but I don’t have a proper job… shouldn’t be spending money on things I could live without…

By: Colin Brooks

Colin Brooks — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:16:32 +0000

Yeah I saw the prices! I will try it in a bit and see if it’s worth buying now. I’m trying not to spend too much money on things I could live without. Since I don’t have a proper job and I’m still a student, every little helps.

I didn’t mean this to sound like an advert for Tesco.

By: Pewari

Pewari — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:01:19 +0000

Just had a look, PrintFolio (which is the bundle version) comes in at £44 – not bad considering Windows MS Publisher is £150…

By: Pewari

Pewari — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:58:14 +0000

It is excellent – had a play with it this afternoon with Akra Jr, and he found it much easier just to drag and drop things around. He enjoyed it much more and was more creative as a result, I think.

If you end up getting it, it’s worth getting the actual boxed retail version as you get more clip art (and it’s good clip art – lots of photos, rather than crappy clip art). Also have a look at the bundle PrintFolio which includes Swift Publisher with extras like Art Text (mac equivalent of Word Art, but better) and CD label design thingie, business card design, mailing labels etc for not much extra cost.

By: Colin Brooks

Colin Brooks — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:53:27 +0000

I haven’t used Swift Publisher before. I’m downloading it as I type this comment because it seems like a great piece of software. You are right, MS Word is not the best program to be using for things like that. However, it’s popular and if you push hard enough it can do things it’s not really meant to do. I think they use it so students already know how to use at least one word processor and it is something that most offices use also. I remember student placements (you know the ones that go into a work experience placement for a week or so) who, although were pretty young, knew how to at least use Word and the MS Office suite (since the rest of it uses the same principles).

I love my iMac too (I love it more than my MacBook because of the massiveness of the screen – 24″ can fit a lot of stuff) and the apps available for Mac OS X can do things so much easier than Windows programs. I find it extremely frustrating to use Windows (both XP and Vista) now but I am still stuck with using MS Office for Mac because I must make my documents and work compatible with the computers at Uni and what other students use. I should not complain, Word covers my needs for now since I just have to produce text reports and having tried the iWork suite as well I don’t feel I’m missing anything but Swift Publisher looks great!